“Nearly” is the operative word. Plans are afoot to get a long-awaited master plan in gear for a proposed settlement that would permanently change the face of this urban capital.

Most assuredly, it would change the politics, too.

What is now home mostly to birds, mosquitoes and deer flies would eventually house up to 70,000 people in “a variety of neighborhoods with a range of housing types for a diverse population … minutes from downtown and the airport,” according to a recent update of the 2009 draft of the Northwest Quadrant Master Plan.

Located between Bangerter Highway and 8800 West, from 2100 South to 3700 North, the quadrant is the last major expanse of undeveloped land in the city. What is envisioned is nothing less than another city appended to the core. With 70,000 potential residents (the city’s principal planner, Everett Joyce, sees upwards of 300,000 in the future), the development would rival many cities in Utah.

This is Salt Lake City’s answer to Daybreak, the South Jordan megaburb that Kennecott Land Company built on recovered mining property, except the Northwest Quadrant sits on a floodplain dotted by aging landfills susceptible to earthquake liquefaction.

“I like to think it’s better than Daybreak,” says Salt Lake City Councilman Carlton Christensen. “This is an opportunity to develop a community that really espouses some of the core values we espouse in this city, and if it can’t, shame on us.”

The values Christensen talks about are things like sustainability, air quality and walkability. There are also values—albeit unspoken—of Utah’s conservative LDS majority that come into play.

Political Hay“People
don’t like to talk about it much,” says former Salt Lake City Mayor
Rocky Anderson, never one to shy away from controversy. “This could
alter the political makeup of this community, and we could end up being
another Sandy.”

The
master plan doesn’t exactly mention social engineering as a goal, and
the area’s largest landowner—The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day
Saints—is deferring to the city as to what those goals are. Questions
about liquor licensing, free-speech areas and even dog ownership were
answered simply: “We are a longtime property owner in the area—our
ownership originally goes back years as a welfare farm. However, what
our role in any possible development in the area might be is
undetermined until Salt Lake City has determined its master plan for
the area.”

As
the LDS Church is the largest landowner, it seems only natural to
inquire about the development through its property arms—Suburban Land
Reserve and Property Reserve Inc. But questions sent to Carl Duke,
property manager for SLR, were eventually fielded by the LDS Church’s
communications department.

Stephen
Goldsmith, former planning director for the city, was surprised at the
easy interface between the entities. “I’m looking at the ethical
construct of this,” he puzzles. “As the church began to reorganize
their for-profit side, they moved [real-estate development] into
different hands, and they have worked very hard to differentiate their
ecclesiastical side from their commercial side.”

But
the Northwest Quadrant holds such huge implications for both the city
and the church that the church can’t simply pass it off as a
garden-variety development project.

The
church has often mentioned its history of stimulus aid amid poor
economic times. According to a history by Garth Magnum, in the
Depression ’30s, the LDS Church began its welfare system by placing
unemployed urban Mormons with self-sufficient farmers. Perhaps there’s
some irony in the fact that the church’s welfare goal for the Northwest
Quadrant leaves farms behind in favor of an urban village.

The Green EdgeWhether
this plan stimulates positively or negatively is a question that
planners have yet to fully evaluate. Promises of bright development and
exciting opportunities are often just that. The Gateway was slated to
complement downtown Salt Lake City instead of draining the core of its
retail and business tenants.

The
LDS Church, of course, has since stepped in to fill what The Gateway
sucked away. It’s developing the massive City Creek Center where two
downtown malls once thrived.

Salt
Lake City Councilman S%uFFFDren Simonsen is concerned that the Northwest
Quadrant development will suck even more from the city and its environs
and could well sidetrack the already stalled plans to develop around
transit stops. He’s been talking about the master plan for the past
four years, but his strident advocacy of planning and sustainability
haven’t earned him a lot of brownie points from his colleagues.

“I’m a bit dismayed with the process because I don’t think we’ve gone through an analysis of not building,”
he says. “When you start with the assumption that you do only one
thing—to develop it—then everything you put together in your toolbox
supports your assumption.”

Manure in the MixIndeed, the plan is all about development. It “represents an important milestone in the continuing development of Salt Lake City,” the plan says.

“The
purpose of this plan is to apply the community’s shared values and
goals to the establishment of a basis for rational decision-making and
planning-policy formulation by Salt Lake City’s decisionmakers
regarding future development of the Northwest Quadrant area.”

“This
is not just a plan for a subdivision; it’s a plan for a whole new
town,” says Jennifer Gillmor Larson, whose family has ranched the area
for 100 years. A 2007 visioning workshop came up with an, ahem,
“sustainable” scenario to “balance and integrate the environmental,
social and economic components of the community; meet the needs of
existing and future generations; respect the needs of other communities
in the region and globally; and preserve and enhance natural ecological
functions.”

Contrast
that picture-perfect vision with what’s actually there today: a winding
dirt road from the airport’s International Center (left) dotted with warning
signs against stopping, likely a safety precaution for the airport to
keep terrorists or kids playing with laser beams at bay.

This
will be a self-contained, idyllic village where residents could walk to
a farmers market. Buildings will be “green,” constructed for the best
possible energy use, and bridges and underpasses will cross natural
habitat areas to “ensure continuous greenway connections.” Besides a
town center, there will be a village center and neighborhood
centers—all mixed-use gathering places for the diverse, eco-friendly
population.

“A
significant portion of the Northwest Quadrant will form a hierarchy of
natural systems; create a green edge to Salt Lake City; buffer the
Great Salt Lake and Bailey’s Lake; and create an internal greenway
system within the developed portion of the Northwest Quadrant,” the
plan says.

The emphasis on green is somewhat ironic given the lack of it in this area.